Today our CEOs will announce a proposal that we hope will make a constructive contribution to the dialogue. Our joint proposal takes the form of a suggested legislative framework for consideration by lawmakers, and is laid out here. Below we discuss the seven key elements:

First, both companies have long been proponents of the FCCís current wireline broadband openness principles, which ensure that consumers have access to all legal content on the Internet, and can use what applications, services, and devices they choose. The enforceability of those principles was called into serious question by the recent Comcast court decision. Our proposal would now make those principles fully enforceable at the FCC.

They seem to agree with my view that its a mixture of good nd bad: so its a win in that Verizon agreed to the good stuff, and a loss in that Google agreed to the bad stuff - but the public can still influence the legislators too.

Americans, start writing to the FCC and your congressman etc., Europeans: Neelie Kroes already seems sympathetic, write to her and the other relevant European Commissioners (the new competition one at least).

UPDATE: Facebook has taken an opposite position from Google and stated it did not support the proposal. Facebook suggests it's a move to begin chipping away at the "openness" of the internet.

~ Facebook was founded on and flourished in an open internet.

AT&T on the other hand states that the proposed plan is a "reasonable framework".

~ AT&T stands to profit from the proposed plan.

Most are avoiding the fray, for now, but some are denouncing it for what it is.

media mogul Barry Diller called the proposal a sham

The early reaction to the proposal is mostly negative. source (and interesting read): [finance.yahoo.com...]

The silence of big media companies like Comcast and the News Corporation on the issue has been noticeable. Media companies‚Äô traditional business models have been about controlled pathways to the customer, and they may see benefits in restoring some of that control.

Mr. Diller asserted that the Google-Verizon proposal ‚Äúdoesn‚Äôt preserve ‚Äėnet neutrality,‚Äô full stop, or anything like it.‚ÄĚ Asked if other media executives were staying quiet because they stand to gain from a less open Internet, he said simply, ‚ÄúYes.‚ÄĚ

Over the past few days thereís been a lot of discussion surrounding our announcement of a policy proposal on network neutrality we put together with Verizon. On balance, we believe this proposal represents real progress on what has become a very contentious issue, and we think it could help move the network neutrality debate forward constructively.

We donít expect everyone to agree with every aspect of our proposal, but there has been a number of inaccuracies about it, and we do want to separate fact from fiction.

@Stoutfiles, probably true, but the slip away from net neutrality is to the detriment of everyone other than telcos: the big websites may be able to lock out small competition, but only at the extremely high price of having to split their profits with the ISPs.